The Relationship between Empathy and Attachment in Children and Adolescents: Three-Level Meta-Analyses

Abstract

Empathy is one of the leading social abilities to understand or feel the emotions of other people. Attachment is thought to be a critical influential factor of empathy, as revealed by attachment theory and experimental studies, while empathy is also believed to facilitate the quality of attachment. Although many studies are conducted concerning the two subjects, the direction and magnitude of their relationship still remain unclear. In order to clarify the discrepant results in the previous study and explore the moderators in the empathy-attachment association, three-level meta-analyses were conducted in the present work. Based on 212 effect sizes from 59 samples in 50 studies with a total of 24,572 participants, random effect model analyses showed that empathy was insignificantly correlated with anxious attachment, significantly negatively correlated with avoidant attachment, and significantly positively correlated with secure attachment. The meta-analytic results indicated that children and adolescents with high secure attachment tend to show more empathy than those with low secure attachment. The meta-regression model revealed significant effects of the empathy dimension, culture, empathy measurement tools, and publication state. Additionally, implications and future directions for the empathy-attachment relationship were also discussed.

Keywords: adolescents; attachment; children; empathy; meta-analyses.

Figure 1

Flow chart of literature screening.

Figure 2

Funnel plot of Fisher Z scores. Note: (1–3) show models of dimensions of attachment type and empathy; (4–10) show models of empathy and attachment grouped by moderators’ categories.